They're not quite the same, although I envy your Walmartlessness. Walmart is more like a regular store (that happens to be huge, incredibly annoying, and filled with frightening zombies). Walmart has regular products and regular displays and stuff. They're often fairly cheap compared to other places, but they do that by supply-side strangling ("You'll sell this to us for fifty cents even if that puts you just this side of bankruptcy or we'll take our business elsewhere. Can you really afford to lose Walmart?").
Sam's Club and Costco and all that, on the other hand, get their prices low by only selling in bulk and by having no amenities whatsoever. They really do look like you've walked into a shipping warehouse. There's no "decor" at all -- just metal shelving stretching off into the distance -- and very little by way of customer service. Also, they usually sell memberships which you renew annually and you need a membership to go in. I'm not sure what the story is there, because the memberships aren't expensive, so I can't think that they make a lot of money from them. Maybe they make a decent amount of revenue from people who buy them intending to go and then never use them.
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Date: 2007-05-04 12:49 pm (UTC)Sam's Club and Costco and all that, on the other hand, get their prices low by only selling in bulk and by having no amenities whatsoever. They really do look like you've walked into a shipping warehouse. There's no "decor" at all -- just metal shelving stretching off into the distance -- and very little by way of customer service. Also, they usually sell memberships which you renew annually and you need a membership to go in. I'm not sure what the story is there, because the memberships aren't expensive, so I can't think that they make a lot of money from them. Maybe they make a decent amount of revenue from people who buy them intending to go and then never use them.